Instagram Hyperlapse: Making Time-Lapse Clips is easier than Ever

We have all heard people say, ‘Time Flies’. Yet only a few of us who know about time-lapse have actually seen time fly and it definitely makes for an interesting viewing. Time-lapse, when explaining in simple terms basically means to take a snap of the scene every few regular minutes or seconds, so that when these are combined together, it gives the feeling of a certain event happening in a sequence of seconds, when originally it may have taken hours, even days at times. For a more formal and accurate definition of time-lapse photography, we referred to Wiki, and this is what it said:

Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, then played back at 30 frames per second; the result is an apparent 30 × (24 / 25 / 30 frames per second) times speed increase. Time-lapse photography can be considered the opposite of high speed photography or slow motion. Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, e.g. the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking.

Usually shooting a time-lapse sequence means having a very steady set of equipments, including a tripod, a good camera and plenty of patience. You need to really take out time in case you want to shoot a time-lapse sequence, especially something like a sunrise or a sunset. However, what if you are looking for a quick job and do not want to invest in a good DSLR or a tripod and do not have the patience to sit through the process for hours on end, yet want to make a time-lapse? This is where the latest application from Instagram comes into play. The name of the application is Hyperlapse and is currently available across the globe both, for an iPhone and iPad for absolutely free.

App Features

The application is extremely simple to use. Once you have downloaded it, you will be guided through the features of the application, which mainly include:

Ability to shoot handheld time-lapses with the application.

Automatic stablization of videos for a greater quality.

Ability to quickly share the videos right from the application.

Quick shooting access and storing the hyperlapse, so that you can edit the time lapse later on, without missing out on the scene in case you wish to make back to back time lapse videos.

You can also change the speed at which the hyperlapse plays, starting from 1X to 12X.

The application can be used both in landscape and portrait mode.

How does it all work?

Hyperlapse courtesy: iJustine

The moment you run the application, you are asked to give access to your camera, so that the application can record videos. In the current version of hyperlapse, there is an automatic setting that one second long frame is captured for every lapsed 5 seconds. There is no way to change that at least for now. When you have set your camera against the scene, you simply press the shutter button and the app starts to record the time-lapse. You can move the phone around in case you want to and also shift the focus, simply by tapping on the screen in the application.

Once you are done recording the time-lapse, you can select the speed at which you want it to play, starting from 1X to 12X. The application then automatically stitches and stabilizes your time lapse and saves it to your camera roll. You can access the time-lapse right from there to play it on your iPhone or simply share it from within the application. Currently, you can share only to Facebook and Instagram from within the application.

Features that are missing

There are a fair few features that we would like the application to bring to the table. The first obviously being, that the app should be made available across other ecosystems such as Android and Windows Phone too, as currently it is an iOS exclusive product. Moving on from that, we would like the ability to set up our custom frame rate when capturing the time-lapse, as well as the ability to edit the frames and maybe add a few filter effects just like what we have seen in Instagram videos. Also third party sharing should be definitely added, though it could well be that with extensive sharing abilities of iOS 8, you can achieve this right from the photo gallery instead of relying on the app.

Our Take on the app so far

The app currently is too simple and misses a fair few features that we have already outlined. There is no manual control on the hyperlapse, for example, control over white balance, shutter speed or even the exposure sets. We understand that it is an app made for those who want to just play around with time lapse shots and not for professionals but it would not hurt to give a bit more control over the shots. For the features already on board, the app works flawlessly and we had no issues of forced closes or app freezes. The quality of the time-lapse is perfectly acceptable and the stabilization does make a positive impact. So far, we have definitely been impressed with whatever little the app has to offer and we hope more and more feature sets would be added as we go along.